Three Creeks Confluence Park to Welcome Public Art by 20 Utah Artists

This June, Salt Lake City will welcome Three Creeks Confluence Park. Located, at 1300 South and 900 West, the confluence is the site where Red Butte Creek, Emigration Creek, and Parley’s Creek join together and empty into the Jordan River. Previously a paved-over dead end, the confluence has been day-lighted and transformed into a site for community gathering, recreation, education, and restored riparian habitat. One new feature of the site is a pedestrian bridge spanning the confluence. Fencing on each side of this bridge offered the opportunity for new public artwork designed by local artists.

The artists with artwork in the Three Creeks Confluence public art project are: Elisabeth Bunker, Gyorge Ann Yawn, Claire Taylor, Chanté Burch, biltslouisart, Graham Rich, Hank Mattson, Jonathan and Jennifer Hale, Beto Conejo, Karl Hale,  Lola Reyes, Matt Monsoon, Joseph Toney, Joshua Graham, Rosa Bandeirinha, Reihanah Noori, Ann Chen, Cara Jean Hall, Al Denyer, and Tooza Design.

Twenty designs, each by a different Utah artist or team, were selected by Salt Lake City’s Art Design Board and approved by Mayor Erin Mendenhall for the Three Creeks Confluence project. Selected from 168 proposals, these one-of-a-kind artworks were each designed specifically for the Three Creeks site. Many speak to Salt Lake’s waterways and the natural life they support, and to the communities that live in the Glendale neighborhood where the park is located. Each design was fabricated into a Corten steel fence panel and installed in Three Creeks Confluence Park. Panels are grouped in sets of five that each include one lower, accessible-height panel.

This public art project was an opportunity for artists who work in 2 dimensions to apply for a public art commission, which are often sculptural. The call for artists was designed to be accessible to emerging and established artists, by reducing certain application barriers and providing technical assistance to selected artists. The Salt Lake City Public Art Program encouraged artists with a connection to the Glendale neighborhood and/or to the unique hydrology of Salt Lake City to apply, and twelve of the twenty artists selected for this opportunity articulated one or both of these connections in their proposals.

This project was possible thanks to Metal Arts Foundry, which fabricated the artwork; Trevor Dahl, the local artist and graphic designer who provided technical assistance on the project; and Salt Lake City’s Department of Parks and Public Lands.

Three Creeks Confluence Park, and with it, this newest public art installation, will open to the public this June. In the meantime, the Public Art Program is excited to introduce the designs included in this project and the local artists who created them.